Third-grade teacher Pamela Williams helps students with reading at Thomas Jefferson Elementary. Duval schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti has questioned the validity of a new statewide evaluation of teachers.

A vast majority of public school teachers in Northeast Florida are rated as effective or highly effective, a statistic that one local superintendent says is “inconsistent.”

According to a Florida Department of Education report, released Thursday, 94 percent of classroom teachers in Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns County school districts are at or above par. Out of the 12,041 classroom teachers evaluated, only four teachers were labeled unsatisfactory. Those four are from Duval County Public Schools

The percentage of teachers rated effective or highly effective at Northeast Florida’s 21 D schools is nearly 92 percent. The percentage of teachers rated effective or highly effective at Northeast Florida’s two F schools, both in Duval, is about 87 percent.

Thursday’s report is a collection of teacher, administrator and non-instructional personnel evaluations across all public school systems in Florida. The evaluations come from individual county data submitted to the state, and the Education Department presented a comprehensive report.

The new evaluation system includes the state’s first stab at a value-added model, which is the difference between the learning growth a student makes in a teacher’s class and the statistical predicted learning growth the student should have earned based on previous performance.

The value-added calculation is half of a teacher’s total evaluation. The other half comes from observations made by principals. Teachers are rated either highly effective, effective, needs improvement or unsatisfactory.

State and local teachers unions are opposed to the value-added portion of the evaluation model because, among other concerns, in many districts teachers of non-FCAT classes are forced to accept school-wide averages for their value-added score. The state is also acknowledging that there may be cases where teachers’ value-added scores are inaccurate because they erroneously include or exclude students.

Many not evaluatedStatewide, there were 129,829 Florida teachers evaluated and another 48,988 who were not. Of the evaluated teachers, more than 125,000 were rated highly effective or effective while just about 3,000 were unsatisfactory or needs improvement.

Cynthia Brown, a national education expert whose expertise lies in standards-based education, state education policy and state education agency operations, said it’s important for the public to recognize that Thursday’s report is a first step with the overall goal of evaluating all public teachers.

At this point though, she said it would be difficult to make generalizations about the teaching staff of a specific district.

Superintendents and school board members must further study the results, Brown said, with an emphasis on schools “with your teacher numbers looking good, but your students are still struggling.”

Even parents and the public should be questioning the results, she said.

“If you’re at a C school and all the teachers there are highly effective, then you have to question that,” Brown said.

She said states like Tennessee and Louisiana also had teacher evaluation reports that weren’t refined in the first year of release.

“And what happens is the states always seem to be good at identifying who the really high effective teachers are and the low-performing teachers, it’s just the middle area that ended up being more vague,” Brown said. “And typically what that usually means is that the state or district’s evaluation system isn’t refined enough yet.”

More than 10 percent, or 736, of Duval County’s classroom teachers had performance ratings in the range for “needs improvement,” but because the teachers have been in the profession for three years or less, they were labeled as “developing.”

Vitti said Wednesday while it’s encouraging that a vast majority of Duval teachers are rated highly effective or effective, it’s “very hard to compare apples to apples” because each school district uses a different evaluation model.

He said the overall goal is for districts to be able to use student achievement data to better evaluate teachers, but for now the public has to look at Thursday’s numbers “with a degree of skepticism.”

“There are inconsistencies to an imperfect system which will eventually lead us to where we need to go,” Vitti said. “But right now, the tool needs work and the public really needs to know that.”

When asked how valid the Duval County numbers are, Vitti said they don't appear to be completely accurate.

Pleased in St. JohnsJoseph Joyner, superintendent of St. Johns County Schools, said he is pleased with how the teachers in his county performed.

Joyner said there may not always be a connection between teacher evaluations and school grades because the systems don’t measure the same thing. In the value-added measure every child has a growth expectation, but in school grades students can earn learning gains for just maintaining performance, he said.

Joyner said the correlation should be between value-added scores and teacher observations and he plans on examining the correlation in St. Johns.

“If you see this huge disconnect between the observable and [value-added measure] it means one of these two is not giving us an accurate picture,” he said. He said he won’t be looking at the issue to generate a report, but will determine how the system is working in his county by having the same conversations he’s had with principals each year.

Thursday’s data comes after the state education department botched its release of the numbers Wednesday morning. Officials with the Hillsborough County school system found an error in their numbers, and the education department retracted the entire report.

Florida’s interim education commissioner, Pam Stewart, told a group of state lawmakers that early glitches in the teacher evaluation report are no reason to slow the implementation of the evaluation system, according to the Associated Press.

In many school districts across the state — including Duval, Nassau and Clay — hundreds of teachers were not yet evaluated. For example, in Duval, there were 748 such teachers.

Kathy Hebda, the education department’s deputy chancellor for educator quality, gave a few reasons why a school district hasn’t evaluated every teacher: Some teachers may be on maternity leave, some teachers may have been on sick leave all year, some teachers may have left their district mid-year or some teachers may be in the middle of disputing their evaluation.

Hebda said Wednesday all districts will have submitted all their evaluation data within this month and a new, more complete teacher report will be available in January.

topher.sanders@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4169

khristopher.brooks@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4104

*Reporter's Note: A previous version of this article that appeared in print has been changed in the online edition. One sentence was modified to reflect the Duval County superintendent’s intentions in a comment on how valid the Duval County data appears.

*Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story posted an incorrect infographic for the percentage of teachers in Northeast Florida rated effective or highly effective. The correct graphic has been placed.

All of you have brought up important issues.However,most of the issues seem to be frustrated,and political with over thinking abounding in a sparse room designed for learning, not murky waters.Here's two links you need to read before commenting.The one thing I know is that not two people will have the same take on this legislation, and the plans for implementation.http://www.flgov.com/2011/03/24/governor-scott-signs-student-success-act/

I've taught here and abroad and the problems are simple and the same.The remedies are simple.We cannot save every soul in our sinking ship,or lower standards so mediocrity becomes the goal and a life full of failure the result.We can throw out a life line,but with no guarantees the rope won't break.

There are some societies that value an education over food.They believe missing a meal is worth finishing a book. The book will teach you how you can prevent missing another meal in the future.

The promised land of education is fiction.You are given the tools in this country,but you make the choice to use a pencil to write a best seller, or as a weapon to kill a cockroach or worse.

Modern American public schools have been plagued with what I call "side show issues". They are rooted in belief systems owned by our current politicians and have little to do with learning,teaching,or what is important in our society today. An education is fluid, and changing; it depends on what history has taught us and what we need to do to progress. The more fluent and flexible a society is will either prepare that society to flourish or it will become gobbled up by more enlightened ones. Embracing new technologies and ideas is a fundamental base for success.

I believe there are teachers that would be better in another profession. I don't believe all children are destined to be college bound, or will live to be one-hundred. We need farmers just as much as we need astrophysicists,and baseball players.What we don't need are principals "dirty-dancing" in the halls of schools,or the designers of curriculum and standards that let this happen.

Teaching is a demanding job for young people. A great teacher's life expectancy is about fifteen years. There needs to be a point where teachers ready themselves to go to the next level of personal growth. It's said that each of us will change jobs as many as seven times during our lifetime.I've been through seven already, and have no idea where life may lead me.Our biggest problem is fear of change.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870420680457546816280587799...

@ Khristopher Brooks---Thank you for your response. It was not your sentence structure that I was questioning; just the superintendent's word choice. :-) I notice that the entire sentence was omitted in the updated version of the article.

Here is my take on the test, they expected bad numbers for the teachers in order to not pay them better or to not given performance moneys, and instead the test showed we have better teachers than they thought. So now, like all govermental agencies they will downgrade the point systems so that teachers get lower evaluation numbers and they can avoid paying them what they are worth. Typical republican anti-government employee tactics!

And we havent heard from the teacher haters on this story yet! Wait until the likes of Fly and Westsideconservative read this, they will surely have their neo-con teacher hating talking points from their local commanders ready to tear into the report, the teachers and what ever else they can rant against!

When teachers are forced to teach to the test, students who need to be involved in learning, participating, and enjoying the school day are tuned out. Students come to school with lots of baggage (and I don't mean back packs) and if this is not recognized, teaching them the same way every day is one road to failure. Many of those who establish the criteria for judging teachers have never been in a classroom, are totally ignorant of the pedagogy, and are out to please an equally uneducated population as to what needs to be done to help those kids in need of the most help. Ahh, politics.

Testing is only one tool to evaluate students, not the be all and end all. Teacher evaluations based on statistical analysis is not the way to evaluate a teacher. There are working models in school systems around the country which have proved successful in teacher evaluation. It would behoove Duval County to look to other successful models.

Re Mr. Vitti using "accurately" rather than "accuracy" - I'd be concerned if that's what he'd write in a press release or in a prepared speech. Sometimes I think that many Americans should be taking English as a second language...

Contrary to Dr. Vitti’s opinion—“I think the better word is inconsistent”--the latest teacher evaluations may be accurate: lots of highly effective teachers; knuckleheaded, ignorant students. Consider what DCPS teachers have to deal with. Consider yesterday’s rant (“Blame the parents”) wherein the writer observed that at Dr. Vitti’s introductory meeting at Terry Parker High School only 75 people attended and most were probably teachers. The “parents” were conspicuous by their absence.

Arguably the most effective teacher in history, Socrates, died in 399 B.C.E. If he were teaching in the Duval County Public Schools system today, he would still be a great teacher, but the “students” he gets from the community might not fare any better than they do now. Not even outstanding instructors can teach a rock to think, especially when the rock’s parents are just as dense and disinterested as their child.